Carleton v. Townsend

By the Court,

Rhodes, J. Ejectment to recover a portion of the lot No. 1,188 in the City of San Francisco. Both parties claimed under the prior possession of their respective grantors, and both claimed title under the “ Van Ness Ordinance,” and the statute ratifying and confirming the same, and the plaintiff also relied upon adverse possession for a period exceeding five years before the entry of defendants. The jury found for the plaintiff. The defendants moved for a new trial, and the grounds relied on are errors in law, committed by the Court and excepted to by them. Insufficiency of the evidence to justify the verdict is [221]stated as one of the grounds, but as they do not specify the particulars in which the evidence is insufficient, that ground must be disregarded; and if the proper specifications had been made, the ground could not be maintained, for the evidence appears quite sufficient to sustain the verdict. Several of the specifications of errors in law committed by the Court do not amount to specifications within the meaning of section one hundred and ninety-five of the Practice Act. The general statement that the Court erred in admitting illegal and incompetent evidence for the plaintiff, or in excluding legal and competent evidence offered by the defendants, or in excluding evidence offered by them to show title in the defendants’ grantor, amounts to but little, if anything, more than an allegation that the Court committed errors in law. The defendants have annexed to the judgment a statement on appeal, and the grounds therein contained will be examined so far as it may be necessary to a proper disposition of the case.

1. The plaintiff having introduced in evidence a deed executed to Benjamin T. Black, of San Francisco, in 1859, offered in evidence a deed of the same premises to the plaintiff, executed by Benjamin T. Black, of Oroville, in the County of Butte, in 1862, and the defendants objected to its admission without proof that the grantor was the same person as the grantee of the former deed. The question of the identity of the grantor of the last mentioned deed with the grantee of the previous deed, is a question of fact for the jury, and neither a question of law nor a preliminary question of fact, to be passed on by the Court, before the admission of the deed; and the party producing the deed must satisfy the jury upon this point by competent evidence, otherwise the deed will be disregarded, because it does not show a transmission of the title of the previous grantee. The general rule is that the identity of the name is prima facie evidence of the identity of the person. (2 Phil. Ev. C. H. and E. Notes, 606 ; Thompson v. Manrow, 1 Cal. 428; Mott v. Smith, 16 Cal. 554; Jackson v. Boneham, 15 Johns. 226.) The name of the city or county, usually following the name of the grantor, forms